1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an additionally writable or rewritable recording medium such as a DVD-R (DVD-Recordable) and DVD-RW (DVD-Rewritable), as well as an information recording device and an information recording method for recording information on such a recording medium.
2. Description of Related Art
As an information recording medium onto which information can be additionally written or can be rewritten for a plurality of times, DVD-R and DVD-RW are known. On such an information recording medium, information about the recording speed and the recording condition suitable for the information recording medium is recorded. Specifically, part version information of a recording standard defining a recording method suitable for the disc is recorded in a control data zone in a lead-in area of the DVD-R or DVD-RW. The part version information indicates as to which version of the DVD recording standard the disc is adapted to.
Meanwhile, a drive device (information recording device) for recording information on the DVD-R or DVD-RW has version information of the drive device, indicating the version according to which the drive device can record information. When a certain disc is set, the drive device obtains the above-mentioned part version information from the lead-in area of the disc, and compares the part version information with the version information of the drive device. When the version information of the drive device is equal to or higher than the part version information of the disc, the disc is suitable for the information recording by the drive device. On the contrary, when the version information of the drive device is lower than the part version information of the disc, the drive device is not suitable for recording information on that disc, and the drive device ejects the disc.
In recent years, the performance of the drive device is improved, and there is demand of a disc which can cope with high speed recording such as four-times or eight-times higher speed recording. However, in a situation where discs which can cope with four-times and eight-times higher speed are mixed in a market, there may be a problem that the drive device erroneously ejects a recordable disc, because the part versions are not coincident.
For example, it is supposed that the part version of the four-times higher speed disc is 2.0× and the part version of the eight-times higher speed disc is 3.0×. Normally, in order to ensure the compatibility with lower versions, the eight-times higher speed disc is produced to be able to record information with a four-times higher speed mode. Therefore, on the eight-times higher speed disc, not only the eight-times higher speed recording can be executed by an eight-times higher speed drive device, but also the four-times higher speed recording can be executed by a four-times higher speed drive device.
However, according to the recording standards, since one disc has one part version, only the part version information of version 3.0× is recorded on the eight-times higher speed disc as mentioned above. Therefore, in the case where the four-times higher speed recording is tried on the eight-times higher speed disc by using the four-times higher speed drive device, the drive device reads the part version information (i.e. , version 3.0×) of the eight-times higher speed disc and compares it with the version information (i.e., version 2.0×) of the drive device. As a result, although the drive device can record information onto that disc by the four-times higher speed recording mode, the drive device regards the disc as unusable and ejects it.
Thus, in a method of discriminating a recordable disc by using only the part version information, when information is recorded onto a disc of higher version by a drive device of lower version than the disc, the disc is automatically ejected although the recording can be actually executed.